Monday, 21 July 2014

A
Palestinian boy, who medics said was wounded by Israeli shelling,
receives treatment at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City July 20, 2014: photo by Ali Jadallah via Egyptian Streets, 20 July 2014

And the watchman said: Captain, what of the night?

And the Captain said, watchman, what of the night?

Overnight and into the morning, Israel committed another massacre
in Gaza. Ambulances are blocked from reaching the effected areas so we
still don’t know the full extent of the damage. Ma’an News Agency
reports:"At least 40 people have been killed and hundreds have been injured
in the eastern neighborhood, medics said Sunday. The death toll is
expected to rise as more bodies are uncovered."As we write, the reports on the number of people killed increased to 60. Who knows how many by the time you read this message?

Here is an account from Dr. Mona El-Farra in Gaza City written in the early hours of the morning:

Israeli tanks, airforce are bombing continuously. They are
targeting Al-Shajaiya neighborhood [eastern part of Gaza City]. The
airforce is flying planes very low and they are shelling houses. They
are shelling everywhere, hitting many houses. People are dying.

The
Israeli occupation dehumanizes us by killing us while we are sleeping.The ambulances are trying to reach the dead and injured and transfer them to hospitals but many ambulances couldn't make it.Tens of wounded people, old and young, are stranded. The ambulances
can't reach them to help them. Tens of bodies in the street or buried in
the rubble. My friend Hani is a father in Al-Shajaiya and his wife is
pregnant. He called me and told me that it's not possible for the
ambulance to reach them. He is scared that they will die there before
the ambulance reaches his family because there is bombing everywhere.The number of people killed is increasing every minute because medical teams can't reach the area and people are bleeding. People are running, terrified in the streets.Many families, many children are leaving the Al-Shajaiya
neighborhood coming to Gaza's city center. Women, men, children walking
and running. I can see a woman carrying her baby and terrified children
around her. They are running to escape the smell of death.The bombs and the shrapnel that are falling like rain on us are made
and supported by your governments: England, USA, Australia, etc.It is better to use these funds for health and education.Which kind of humanity is this? Which kind of modern society is this?This is what the Israeli occupation is doing and all the while using propaganda to try to hide the truth.I call on everyone in this world don't say that you didn't know. I am telling you right now and you can hear me.This occupation, this massacre, is protected by a silent world.Wake up. Don’t remain silent.

-- Middle East Children's Alliance, 20 July 2014

Palestinians
sit in the bucket of an excavator as families flee the Shujayeh
neighbourhood during heavy Israeli shelling in Gaza City on July 20, 2014: photo by Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters, 20 July 2014

'Death and horror' in Gaza as thousands flee Israeli bombardment

Palestinian government condemns attack on Shujai'iya district as 'war crime' as Israel announces deaths of 13 soldiers

The fiercest fighting of the 13-day war in Gaza erupted on Sunday as Israel
dramatically widened its ground offensive, sending tanks and troops
into urban areas and causing thousands of panicked civilians to flee.

The
Palestinian government has described the attack on Gaza's Shujai'iya
neighbourhood, in which at least 60 people were killed, as a "war crime"
which required immediate international intervention.

It came as
the Israeli military announced that 13 soldiers had been killed in an
attack by Palestinian militants in Gaza. No more details were
immediately available.

A statement from the Palestinian government
said it "condemned in the strongest terms the heinous massacre
committed by the Israeli occupation forces against innocent Palestinian
civilians in the neighbourhood of Shujai'iya".

The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas issued a similar statement condemning the "massacre".

Images
of the corpses of women and children lying in streets were posted on
Facebook as hospitals were overwhelmed with the dead, injured and those
seeking sanctuary from the onslaught.

Children in hospital on July 20, 2014 after receiving treatment for their injuries: photo by AP via Egyptian Streets, 20 July 2014 .

Palestinian human rights
organisations also warned that the disproportionate number of civilian
deaths could constitute a war crime committed by Israel.

Despite
Israel saying it had agreed to a two-hour ceasefire in the middle of the
day, requested by the Red Cross to allow for the injured and dead to be
evacuated, shelling and gunfire continued. Israel blamed continued
Hamas rocket fire for the breakdown of the humanitarian truce.

All morning, terrified people ran from their homes, some
barefoot and nearly all empty-handed. Others crowded on the backs of
trucks or rode on the bonnets of cars in a desperate attempt to flee.
Sky News reported that some had described a "massacre" in Shujai'iya.
Witnesses reported hearing small arms fire inside Gaza, suggesting gun
battles on the streets. Heavy shelling continued from the air and sea.

Bodies were pulled from rubble amid massive destruction of buildings in the neighbourhood. Masked gunmen were on the streets.

Late
on Saturday evening, Israeli forces had hit eastern areas of Gaza City
with the heaviest bombardment yet of the 13-day war. The assault was
most intense in the direction of Shujai'iya, where an orange glow of
flames lit up the sky. At one stage, artillery and mortar rounds were
hitting the outskirts of the city every five seconds. Later in the night
jets flew low passes over the coast.

The Guardian saw families
squeezing into the back of what few vehicles were available as streets
further east were pounded by artillery fire.

A
Palestinian girl looks out from a vehicle while fleeing the Shujayeh
neighbourhood during heavy Israeli shelling in Gaza City July 20, 2014: photo by Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters, 20 July 2014

Columns of people,
many of them too scared, angry and shocked to speak, approached down the
main road to the east and from side streets, even as small arms fire
was audible in the distance.

One of those fleeing was Sabreen
Hattad, 34, with her three children. "The Israeli shells were hitting
the house. We stayed the night because we were so scared but about six
in the morning we decided to escape," she said.

"But where are we supposed to go? The ambulances could not enter and so we ran under shell fire."

Three
other men pass by in a hurry clutching bedding in their arms. Asked
what they had seen they would only answer: "Death and horror."

A Palestinian man carries the lifeless body of a child to an emergency room at Shifa hospital in Gaza: photo by AP, 20 July 2014 via Egyptian Streets

Many
of those escaping Shujai'iya made for Gaza's central Shifa hospital,
which was engulfed by chaotic scenes and ambulances ferrying the dead
came in a steady steam -- among them a local TV cameraman, Khaled Hamad,
killed during the overnight offensive, wheeled out wrapped in a bloody
plastic shroud.

Those who had fled congregated in corridors, on
stairs and in the hospital car park. Staff put mattresses on floors to
accommodate the injured, while some patients were being evacuated.

Palestinians,
who medics said were wounded during heavy Israeli shelling, sit at a
hospital in Gaza City July 20, 2014: photo by Mohammed Salem / Reuters, 20 July 2014

Aish
Ijla, 38, whose leg was broken by shrapnel, said: "We live very close
to the border. When the shells started we couldn't leave the house. It
is two storeys. The shells were hitting the upper floor so we all moved
downstairs. There were 30 of us in the house. Then the shrapnel started
hitting the door.

"It was quiet for a moment and we decided to
run. But as we were on the road a shell landed near me, breaking my leg.
I told the family to go on without me and carried on going for a little
bit and stopping then going on. Eventually an ambulance reached me
after two hours."

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA,
said more than 63,000 people had sought sanctuary in 49 shelters it was
providing in Gaza, and it expected the numbers to rise.

"The number has
tripled in the last three days, reflecting the intensity of the conflict
and the inordinate threats the fighting is posing to civilians. We call
on all sides to exercise maximum restraint and to adhere to obligations
under international law to protect civilians and humanitarian workers,"
said spokesman Chris Gunness.

Peter Beaumont in Gaza City and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem, The Guardian, Sunday 20 July 2014 10.35 EDT

Israel kills scores in Gaza City suburb in deadliest assault of offensive so far

Special dispatch: Peter Beaumont reports from Shujai'iya, where fleeing and injured tell of streets strewn with bodies and rubble

A woman arrives at
al-Shifa hospital, Gaza, where most of those killed and injured in the
Israeli assault were taken: photo by Thomas Coex/AFP, 20 July 2014

Al-Beltaji
Street, off the main road in Shujai'iya, is a scene of utter
devastation -- the site of Israel's bloodiest assault in almost two
weeks of fighting in the coastal strip.An
ambulance sat on shot-out tyres, shrapnel punched through its sides. A
charred car lay flattened as if by a giant hand. Smoke rose from one end
of the street in a dark billowing curtain.

Fallen trees, tangled
electricity cables and drifts of rubble covered the road, smashed,
chopped and torn apart by Israeli shells and bombs that slammed into
this Gaza City district at a rate of one every five seconds on Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday.

A
body was carried out of a ruined house, then a second and a third --
seven in total from buildings within a hundred metres of each other
during a brief agreed lull in the fighting to evacuate the dead and
wounded. A little further along, bodies lay in the street where they had
fallen, mostly scorched figures -- one still in a yellow dressing gown --
others missing limbs.

"Come out it's safe," rescue officials shouted as they picked their way along the street.

At
least 67 people -- some fighters but many civilians -- were killed in a
night of intense violence in Shujai'iya that has been described by the
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as a massacre. Hundreds more were
injured.

At the far end of the street, a family emerged running,
led by a man cradling a child. Slowed at times by the rubble, their
faces, stunned by fear, were deaf to questions, focused only on reaching
the road leading to the relative safety of Gaza's City centre.

Raed
Zaqtout fled at 10am on Sunday morning, but returned with his brother
in the midst of a two-hour humanitarian ceasefire organised by the Red
Cross to retrieve the dead and the injured. The ceasefire only lasted an
hour.

"We stayed in the house while they were shelling. Two other
families came to shelter with us. In the morning we decided to escape
along that lane," he said, pointing to an opening opposite. "Even then
some of us were injured, thankfully only lightly, by shrapnel."

Both
sides have accused the other of breaking the ceasefire. An Israeli
military spokesman conceded that during the brief initial pause in fire,
Israeli forces had continued firing in an adjacent neighbourhood -- an
area, he claimed, that was not covered by the truce.

Nonetheless, it is
that Israeli fire that appeared to have hastened the Hamas fighters'
return to hostilities.

As the regular thud of explosions resumed,
three Palestinian fighters -- carrying AK-47s, and with their faces
wrapped in scarves -- jogged along the street. Other militants were seen
sheltering in the buildings. Shujai'iya residents said the heavy
shelling began around midnight as tanks and soldiers reached the edge of
their neighbourhood -- a fierce gun battle followed.

In the first
hours of shelling, it was too dangerous for ambulances to approach –-
residents were faced with a choice: stay and risk being killed while
sheltering at home, or make a run for it and risk being caught in the
crossfire.

Those who decided to flee started moving at dawn, when
Shujai'iya was still under heavy Israeli tank and mortar fire. They
hurried past the corpses in the street, some carried their frightened
children, most with only the clothes they had escaped in -- several
barefoot.

Among the 30,000 who fled were Sabreen Hattad, 34, and her three children.

"The
Israeli shells were hitting the house. We stayed the night because we
were so scared but at about 6am, we decided to escape.

"But where are we supposed to go? The ambulances could not enter and so we ran under shell fire."

Three
men rushed past, clutching bedding. Asked what they had seen they
replied only: "Death and horror." The sound of small-arms fire rattled
from the direction they had come.

A
Palestinian man reacts as he carries a boy, who medics said was wounded
in Israeli shelling, at a hospital in Gaza City July 20, 2014: photo by Suhaib Salem / Reuters, 20 July 2014

Many of those who fled
Shujai'iya headed for Gaza City's Shifa hospital, which was engulfed in
chaos. Ambulances that had finally and briefly been given access to the
site of the carnage sped in steadily, ferrying the dead -- among them a
local TV cameraman, Khaled Hamad, who was killed during the overnight
offensive alongside a paramedic.At the morgue, dozens crowded the entrance demanding to be let in to look for missing relatives -- and too often found them.

A medic carries a young girl killed on Sunday in Al-Shuja’iya: photo by AP via Egyptian Streets, 20 July 2014

Inside
the hospital, the staff put mattresses on floors to accommodate the
injured, while other patients were evacuated. Nurses carefully placed
Aish Ijla, 38, on a mattress in a corridor. His leg had been broken by
shrapnel.

"When the shells started we couldn't leave the house --
30 of us. The shells were hitting the upper floor so we all moved
downstairs. Then the shrapnel started hitting our door.

"It became
quiet for a moment and we decided we should run. But as we were on the
road a shell landed near me, breaking my leg. I told my family to go on
with out me. I carried on -- stopping, then limping. Two hours later, an
ambulance reached me ."

The
sister of medic Fuad Jaber, who was killed while on duty in Gaza’s
eastern Shujayeh district, mourns during his funeral in Gaza City on
July 20, 2014: photo by Mohammed Abed / AFP, 20 July 2014

Arye Shalicar, a spokesman for the Israeli
military, told the Guardian that Shujai'iya was a "frontline base" for
Hamas fighters: "140 rockets have been launched from there in the last
week and a half alone. And [there are] not only rockets but tunnels.

"We
asked the population to evacuate to other neighbourhoods. If we were
not bothered about civilians we would have just bombed from the air
rather than sending in tanks and soldiers, dozens of whom have been
wounded."

Hamas fighters may be based in Shujai'iya and rockets
fired from its streets, but it is also the most densely populated
residential neighbourhood in Gaza City. Many homes have been targeted.

The
injured were still being brought to Shifa hospital on Sunday evening.
Two young girls arrived, one with a bleeding head wound, another with
her teeth smashed out, covered in dust. Another man had lost most of his
face.

Naser Tattar, the hospital's director, said at least 17
children, 14 women and four elderly were among the 67 killed in the
Israeli assault. About 400 more were wounded. The medical director, Dr
Mohammad El Ron, stood in the casualty department, exhausted: "Most of
the casualties brought in so far have been dead."

Smoke
rises during what witnesses said was heavy Israeli shelling in the
Shejaia neighbourhood in Gaza City July 20, 2014: photo by Mohammed Salem / Reuters, 20 July 2014

Dr. Mona El-Farra: We are
surrounded by death

July 17th, 20143:22 PM PSTThe following conversation took place moments ago between MECA
staff member Ziad Abbas in the United States and Dr. Mona El- Farra in Gaza, as Israel launched its ground invasion.

Ziad Abbas: How are you doing?

Dr. Mona El- Farra: I’m surviving. But it seems as of an hour ago, another war has just begun.

ZA: Dr. Mona, where are you now?

ME: I am staying in Al-Remal, near the center of
the Gaza Strip. I came to stay with two elderly friends who are ill.
They asked me to be with them since I am a physician and their chronic
diseases have made them very scared for their lives. Especially since
they live on the 6th floor of a 7 story building with no
electricity and or working elevator. Plus, perhaps other families in the
building will feel better knowing there is a doctor in the building. Wait, wait! The bombing is very close! (pause and sounds of bombing)
It’s very close. The whole building is shaking again, very badly!(pause)They are bombing from the air, sea and ground. I can hear continuous
bombing. The building is constantly shaking. It could very well be
that this is the end.

ZA: What do you mean, “the end”?

ME: When you hear these sounds and feel the shaking
of the building under you, it means any moment could mean your death.
You cannot think of anything other than what that would be like. We are
surrounded by death, from the air to the sea and the ground. A few
minutes ago our neighbors got a call from the Israeli military that they
are going to bomb the home three hundred feet from me. So we decided
to move from the living room, to another room thirty feet to the east,
which might be safer. But no place is safe right now.

ZA: Are you okay, Mona? Do you want me to end the call?

ME: No, no, no, no. Please stay on the line with
me; I’m scared. It is a terrible day. I can’t believe this is
happening around us. It’s as if we are living in a nightmare or a
horror film. You know, I came to this building this evening thinking
that I could rest. I changed my clothes hoping to relax. But when they
started bombing I changed my clothes again to be prepared in case for
anything that might happen.I have two small bags -- one with my keys and passports, money and
important documents and the other smaller bag with my medicine that I
carry with me at all times like antibiotics and other such. I carry the
medicine with me at all times in case anyone needs immediate help.
This would be similar to the Bay Area and people preparing themselves in
the case of an earthquake or natural disaster. But nothing about this
disaster is natural.

ZA: Were you able to go home to your apartment today?

ME: No, there’s no time. We had five hours (the
temporary ceasefire) and I used the time to work with the MECA team to
distribute milk and supplies to 300 families. I am really tired, you
know, and just couldn’t go to check on my house because were just too
busy. I feel that I carry a duty on my shoulders, and I did my duty.
And I only ran back here afterwards because they were begging me to come
and stay with them.

[Dr. Mona’s apartment is near the coast. She couldn’t stay there
because she lost the windows and it’s dangerously close to the water.]

You know, Ziad, I can move around. I don’t have my children with me -- they
are grown -- but I can only imagine how it is for families and their
children surrounded by these type of horrific sounds and destruction. I
was speaking with my nephew today and he told me that his 4-year-old
son awoke screaming running to his father during the night after the
sound of the bombs. The father wanted to ease his fears and said,
“Don’t be scared, this is fireworks.” And the boy responded, “I don’t
like fireworks anymore. I don’t like these kind of fireworks.” What
Israel is doing is not just killing people; it is traumatizing
generations.ZA: Dr Mona, I know the situation is very hard, but I need to ask, how are people managing the day-to-day?ME: I talked with many people today and one of the
main concerns is the issue of water. Many neighborhoods can’t access
water at all because they bombed the infrastructure and water lines. And
people living in buildings like this can’t get water because there’s no
electricity to pump it. We have a few bottles of water with us right
now, and this is what other people are doing -- storing and rationing what
water they can find in anything that will hold water. My God, the sounds are crazy! It is a combination of bombing, the
sounds of helicopters and F-16s and various sounds from all directions!

[LOUD explosions in the background]

I’m really scared now. Wait, I want to check on my friends and see if they are all right. OK, I’m back. Please don’t get off the phone. Stay, stay.

ZA: I’m with you. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.ME: I don’t know if we will survive this attack again.ZA: You survived 2008, 2009, you survived 2012 and you will make it.

ME: Who knows? You never get used to war. And this
attack is much more intense than I can ever remember attacks being.
You never get used to death surrounding you. In any case, I feel good
about what I did today. I did my duty today. But what about the rest
of the world? What are they doing outside while our children are dying
and we are being bombed? What is their duty? ZA: Are you okay, Mona?ME: Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m a strong woman,
Ziad, at least sometimes. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know the
meaning of strong anymore. How can you be strong in this situation?
Listen, listen. Can you hear that people are knocking on the door of the
apartment? Wait. Call me back in half an hour. (Dr. Mona hung up.)

-- Middle East Children's Alliance, 17 July 2014

A Child's View of Gaza #25, 2011, from a MECA project in Gaza for children traumatised by war

A Child's View of Gaza #22, 2011, from a MECA project in Gaza for children traumatised by war

A Child's View of Gaza #12, 2011, from a MECA project in Gaza for children traumatised by war

From listening to both Netanyahu and the IDF military spokesman Lerner on BBC last night, I got the impression that they were, if anything, encouraged by the relative lack of international objection to the Sunday slaughter -- less than in 2009, Lerner suggested, and sadly, I fear he had that right.

There's a general feeling ("smart money"/"conventional wisdom") that the Palestinians have unwisely -- suicidally -- detached themselves from the civilized world. As if the isolation of this captive, blockaded enclave were entirely its own doing.

In any case, it appears the invader has been granted a free pass here, so far; and of course that promises nothing good.